Saturday, May 30, 2009

From the city of Detroit, who hasn't seen a republican since Martin Luther broke from the church......

Empty jail cells are normally something to celebrate, but Wayne County's top law enforcement officials say the hundreds of vacant jail beds are not because of a drop in crime or more reasonable sentencing. Floors of the downtown Detroit jail are empty because police are arresting fewer people accused of those crimes.

Altogether, three county jails that held about 2,500 prisoners a year ago now house 400 fewer inmates.

Sheriff Warren Evans said police are so slow to respond to some calls that the crimes never get reported. Prosecutor Kym Worthy was more blunt:

"We don't tell the truth about crime," she said.

Detroit has lost hundreds of sworn officers in recent years. The Police Department didn't respond to repeated requests for interviews with its top leaders, but it released preliminary statistics showing an overall decline in criminal activity this year, despite a 24% increase in homicides.

East-sider Joyce Betty, 56, isn't buying it.

Last February, a young assailant snatched Betty's purse, which contained $300 in cash, while she pumped gas at a Mack Avenue filling station. Surveillance cameras captured the crime on videotape, but police never responded.

Few places in Virginia are as draining to the soul and as numbing to the buttocks as the branch offices of the Department of Motor Vehicles. And yet, until recently, smiling was still permitted there.

No more. As part of the DMV's effort to develop super-secure driver's licenses and foolproof identification cards, the agency has issued a smile ban, directing customers to adopt a "neutral expression" in their portraits, thereby extinguishing whatever happiness comes with finally hearing one's number called.

The driver's license photo, it seems, is destined to look like a mug shot.

Phil here was sentenced to 19 years yesterday for killing Lana Clarkson.

Now who did Phil here vote for last November? If you need a hint read his lapel.

Out of curiosity, how does it feel to know that you voted for the same guy this idiot voted for?

On a related note, it's too bad he didn't get one of those empathetic type judges democrats are always touting. Then he would have been out in a couple of years so he could go back out into society and kill another girlfriend. Oh, and vote for Obama's reelection.

Despite a veto from Governor Linda Lingle (R) last week, the Hawaii Legislature forced through several tax increases on Monday, including the addition of three income tax brackets on top of the current nine: 9 percent on income over $150,000 ($300,000 for joint filers), 10 percent on income over $175,000 ($350,000 for joint filers), and 11 percent on income over $200,000 ($400,000 for joint filers). By adding the 11% bracket, Hawaii will move from eighth to first in the ranking of top state income tax rates, passing Maine, New Jersey, Iowa, Oregon, Vermont, Rhode Island and California.

In Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact No. 169, director of state projects Joseph Henchman and analyst Mark Robyn find that with its new, dramatically higher income tax rates, Hawaii becomes the fifth state to adopt a so-called "millionaires' tax," joining California, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. Such taxes are unique in that they impose a top rate near or above 10% on a small subset of high-income earners. Henchman and Robyn point out that Hawaii's decision is a poor one when it comes to sound fiscal policy.

Are all these state's trying to force all the millionaires to live in Texas, Tennessee and Florida? It sure seems like that's what's happening.

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn’t have the nerve to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Matthew Burton had gotten out of prison three years and two months before the end of a seven-year term in Kentucky when he was arrested Wednesday in Cincinnati after allegedly shooting his estranged wife seven times and leaving her in critical condition.

Investigators said Burton, 55, fled the shooting scene, police say, by speeding up Interstate 71 and causing several wrecks, injuring other people.

He remained Friday night at the Hamilton County Justice Center in lieu of a $750,000 bond. He was arraigned earlier in the day on one count of felony assault.

Burton was first locked up by Kentucky authorities after he pleaded guilty on Feb. 28, 2005, of second-degree manslaughter and second-degree assault. He was involved in a fatal wreck on I-71 in Gallatin County that killed two people, including his passenger.

The Dec. 31, 2008, release of Burton has angered the prosecutor who put him behind bars in Kentucky.

"How does someone serve out a seven-year sentence in three years and 10 months?" Commonwealth's Attorney Linda Tally Smith said.

This is how. You have democrats run a government that is soft on criminals so that these animals can get back out on the street to victimize another innocent citizen.

Last fall I asked a candidate for office why she was a democrat and she told me that she was a champion for the underdog. I'm thinking the estranged wife here must not have counted as an underdog for the judge.

So the US is spiraling into Marxism. Don't believe me? Just ask the people who witnessed it first hand; the folks at Pravda...........

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

Victor David Hanson on the Obamunists insistence on keeping many Bush policies intact.....

For the last eight years, a sort of parlor game has been played listing the various ways the Bush anti-terror policies supposedly destroyed the Constitution. Liberal opponents — prominent among them Sen. Barack Obama — railed against elements of the Patriot Act, military tribunals, rendition, wiretaps, email intercepts, and Predator drone attacks. These supposedly unnecessary measures, plus Bush’s policies in postwar Iraq, were said to be proof, on Bush’s part, of either paranoia or blatantly partisan efforts to scare us into supporting his unconstitutional agenda.

Now, thanks to President Obama, the verdict is in: All of the Bush protocols turned out to reflect a bipartisan national consensus that has kept us safe from another 9/11-style attack.

How do we know that?

Because President Obama — despite earlier opposition and current name changes and nuancing — has kept intact the entire Bush anti-terrorism program. Apparently President Obama has kept these protocols because he suspects that they help to explain why his first few months in office have been free of successful terrorist attacks — witness the foiled plot earlier this month to murder Jews in New York City and shoot down military planes in upstate New York.

There are only two exceptions to Obama’s new Bushism. Both are revealing. The president says he wishes to shut down Guantanamo in a year, after careful study. But so far no one has come up with an alternative plan for dealing with out-of-uniform terrorists caught on the battlefield plotting harm to the United States. That’s why Obama himself did not close the facility immediately upon entering office, and why the Democratic Congress has just cut off funding to close it. So we are left with the weird paradox that Obama hit hard against his predecessor for opening Guantanamo, while members of his own party are doing their best to keep it open.

A 29-year-old local man, Desmond Hatchett, appeared in Knox County Juvenile Child Support Court last week to discuss some issues regarding child support for his 21 children. Specifically, the childrens' mothers, 11 and counting, want him to pay what he owes in child support.

Constitutionally, there is nothing the state can do to limit him from having more.

"I had four kids in the same year. Twice." Desmond Hatchett told Volunteer TV.

On Friday [5/22], his name appeared on the docket 11 times; Representing about 15 of his 21 children.

"Can you keep up with it all?" WVLT asked Hatchett."Yeah," he said."You know all their names, and ages and birthdays?""Yeah."

Hatchett's name is pretty controversial at the old courthouse.

"The children can't be supported all by Desmond, so the state of Tennessee has had to step in," Hatchett's attorney Keith Pope said.

Hatchett said he doesn't plan on having any more children. In fact he indicated, "I didn't intend to have this many. It just happened." Even so, some Knoxville residents have called for castration. Castration is probably not possible but I suggest a vasectomy would be a good idea.

So last November did Mr. Hatchett vote for The One or did he vote for Four More Years of Bush? Even more interesting; will the 21 children end up as democrats or republicans?

Doug Ross with the continued saga of the preferential handling of Chrysler dealership closings.....

Of particular interest, is how Chrysler decided to keep failing dealerships open in the face of closing profitable ones.

You need to check on why Dealmaker Auto Group in Watertown, NY is still open. They are a multi-franchise company in the area and are on a cash-only basis with Ford... for parts and still have problems getting them. GM has pulled cars from [their] lots while they were trying to sell them and have won judgments against them... PJ Simao is the primary owner of this group... [would seem] like a primary candidate to lose the Dodge/Chrysler portion of his auto group...

Simao, it turns out, is a major Democrat contributor. In the last election alone, Simao sent the maximum contribution ($4,600) to Hillary Clinton's campaign.

A quick review of the Dealmaker Auto Group reveals the following, uhm, issues:

Watertown Daily Times: HSBC: dealer owes $10.2m: Lender says DealMaker Auto Group defaulted on loans, notes from 2006... A commercial lender is seeking a $10.2 million judgment against DealMaker Auto Group, claiming that the car dealership defaulted on a series of loans and notes provided in 2006.

Watertown Daily Times: DealMaker implements companywide procedural training: In the wake of an investigation by the state attorney general that cost the company $2 million in payments, DealMaker Auto Group has begun an aggressive training campaign to standardize and improve operating procedures at all seven dealerships...

Trading Markets: GMAC suit seeks DealMaker assets: The company that provides financing for vehicle inventory at DealMaker LLC's Seaway Chevrolet has begun action in state Supreme Court to take control of the business's assets after claiming it defaulted on a financing agreement. General Motors Acceptance Corp., Cranberry Township, Pa., filed its suit Wednesday at the Jefferson County Clerk's office against DealMaker, seeking a judgment of nearly $2.4 million. It claims, among other things, the Theresa dealership violated its wholesale floor-plan financing agreement.

So another dealer, who appears to be enmeshed in a wide variety of legal and financial disputes, happens to keep his dealership while coincidentally contributing the individual maximum to a Democrat presidential candidate in 2008.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

From Jake Tapper, the only journalist on the POTUS beat willing to say the emperor has no clothes......

The Obama administration on Wednesday issued a booklet heralding the accomplishments of the $787 billion stimulus act 100 days after it was signed into law.

Without question the book lists many projects that are having an impact of one way or another on the economy.

But the first one of the projects featured in "100 Days, 100 Projects" doesn't seem to withstand the scrutiny of its description.

The project is described by the Obama administration this way:

"Using $27 million of Recovery Act funding, a public housing development in Washington, D.C., the Regency House, has undergone a green retrofit. As part of this upgrade, the building installed solar panels, a 'green' roof, a rainwater collection system, energy-efficient lighting as well as water conserving toilets, showerheads, and faucets. The greening of this building will allow the Regency House to save money in energy costs, while lessening their impact on the environment."

In reality, the work done on the Regency House that was funded by the stimulus package amounted to $59,000 in parts and labor, according to Dena Michaelson, director of public affairs for the Washington DC Housing Authority.

The $27 million is the total amount given by the stimulus act to the Washington DC Housing Authority, the vast majority of which hasn't been spent.

From the city of Akron, who hasn't had a republican run the city since Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.......

An Ohio man said he chipped away loose material to prepare a pothole for repair and thought he was helping the city, not breaking the law. An undercover police officer spotted 81-year-old James Stacy in the street near Stacy's home with a pickax and a broom last week. Stacy said he cleared the 3-foot-wide hole because he expected a crew to patch it and wanted the patch to last longer.

Who the hell does this Stacy guy think he is? He's a common criminal thug; doing the work that only a qualified city professional is permitted to do. I bet the city of Akron finds room in a jail for him.

What the hell is so "Progressive" about arresting a pot hole repairing citizen?

To understand why the woes of California's economy threaten the nation's, we must understand the state's road to insolvency. The Age of Reagan did not commence with the Great Communicator's inauguration in 1981. For its real beginning, we need to go back to June 1978, when Californians went to the polls and enacted Proposition 13.

By passing Howard Jarvis's malign initiative, California voters reduced the Golden State to baser metal. Under Republican Gov. Earl Warren and Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, California epitomized the postwar American dream. Its public schools, from kindergarten through Berkeley and UCLA, were the nation's finest; its roads and aqueducts the most efficient at moving cars and water -- the state's lifeblood -- to their destinations. All this was funded by some of the nation's highest taxes, which fell in good measure on the state's flourishing banks and corporations.

Nevermind that the state has spent money like drunken sailors on shore leave. Need another example?

How about a list of the 8,000 people on the city of San Francisco's payroll who make over $100,000/year? The cowbell? Christian Kitchin, who makes $350,324 for the job of "special nurse".

I guess it also never occurred to Mayerson that if property taxes exploded commensurate with the values of real estate in the state, the foreclosure problem there right now would be about 10 times as bad.

Remember that beautiful site of Obama in Columbus saving the day for 25 police recruits who's jobs he saved for simply being The One?

Ah, the good old days.......

It was a success story the White House was eager to highlight: Earlier this year, President Obama attended the graduation of 25 police recruits in Columbus, Ohio, touting it as a victory for the federal stimulus package.

Without the money, the officers never would have hit the streets. They were to be laid off before their first day of patrol, victims of city budget cuts, until the stimulus money saved the class.

But the White House said the $1.2 million grant only guaranteed their jobs until the end of the year. And facing a growing deficit and a fight to pass an income tax hike, Columbus Police on Tuesday announced massive budget cuts that could mean hundreds of layoffs.

Among those who could lose their jobs if voters reject the increase: the 25 new officers who shook the president's hand.

A citizen made a formal complaint about the manner in which Deputy Mark Pelfrey destroyed the goose Monday on Columbia Road in Deerfield Township.

The sheriff's office confirms that Pelfrey received a call at 9:45 a.m. to check on an injured bird in the roadway. He discovered it was seriously injured and killed it.

Witnesses say Pelfrey clubbed and stomped the bird. The sheriff's office would not discuss how the bird was killed.

Chief Deputy John Newsom said Pelfrey remained on duty.

"He's not permitted to talk to the media until we see the (internal investigation) report," Newsom said.

Lisa Kuhn, reported the goose incident along with her husband, Artie. She said she was stunned that Pelfrey clubbed and stomped the animal in front of them and their two children, ages 3 and 1.

First off, this deputy doesn't deserve an investigation he deserves a medal.

The geese out here in Redville have become a first class nuisance to every citizen in the area.

But that's not what caught my attention to this story. This was the kicker...

She saw the officer retrieve a nightstick from his trunk, but she thought he was going to nudge it further off the roadway. Kuhn said he beat the goose, despite her cries for him to stop. She said her husband also saw the officer stomp on its neck.

Kuhn, who has experience raising Mallard ducks, said she didn't think the animal was mortally wounded. She thinks it could have survived with veterinary care.

So let me make sure I have this right. You have knowledge of the injury this animal has so your solution is to call someone else and have them fix the problem instead of handling it yourself? And then you're disappointed when their solution didn't match up with how you would handle it?

Here are the instructions given to jurors by Ohio trial judges. You tell me. Does that match with what she's saying in this video?

Consider all the evidence and make your findings with intelligence and impartiality without bias, sympathy and prejudice so that the plaintiff(s) and the defendant(s) will feel their case was fairly and impartially tried.

You must not be influenced by any consideration of sympathy or prejudice. Sympathy is a common human experience and the law does not expect you to be free from such normal reactions. However, the law requires you to disregard sympathy and not permit it to influence your verdict. You should treat each party with equal consideration[, whether that party is an individual or a business].

It is your duty to weigh the evidence carefully, to decide all the disputed questions of fact, to apply the instructions of the judge to your findings and to render your verdict accordingly. In fulfilling your duty as jurors, your efforts must be to arrive at a fair and just verdict.

As General Motors teeters towards bankruptcy, with a looming deadline of midnight tonight for bondholders to agree to a stock swap, Reutersreports that the talks don't look promising. The Wall Street Journal got the scoop regarding how the unions will shake out in all of this: very similarly to how they did with Chrysler. This seemingly good news for unions might actually turn out to harm them.

According to the WSJ, unions will end up owning 17.5% of the company's common stock, along with $6.5 billion in preferred stock (which includes a whopping 9% annual dividend).

The agreement largely mirrors concessions the union granted to Chrysler LLC last month, including a suspension of cost-of-living allowances, bonuses and some holidays, people familiar with the agreement said. It also includes a provision for job buyouts, as well as to forbid strikes until 2015, these people said. Wages are expected to remain unchanged.

And, of course, one should expect the GM bankruptcy proceedings to go exactly like the Chrysler proceedings: very well for the unions and very badly for bondholders. Hedge fund manager George Schultze was on CNBC earlier arguing that bond investors are going to be very wary about funding unionized firms, given GM will likely shake out just like Chrysler did. That led me to this gem from Bloomberg last week. In it, Schultze is quoted about lessons learned by bondholders though the automaker bankruptcies:

The obvious one is: Don't lend to a company with big legacy liabilities or demand a much higher rate of interest because you may be leapfrogged in a bankruptcy.

Don't forget this one either. Remember Republic Windows and Doors? They were the company who went out of business and the bank (Bank of America) was forced to issue funds on an expired line of credit to pay workers for unused vacation and severance; thus putting the bank in the spot of eating even more money on their deal.

If you don't believe this discussion isn't going on in every credit committee meeting in every bank, you're kidding yourself.

If it's not bad enough the Midwest is suffering economically, is it possible to have a professional football team geographically around Detroit, Cleveland, and Cincinnati? NFL teams are redirecting their flights so their football team won't disappear in that I-71/I-75 corridor.

Here are the power ratings of all NFL teams scored by ESPN's "experts".

Let's just say, when the Browns and Bengals play this fall; you won't have to watch the game....... you'll be able to smell it.

To quickly review the situation, I took all dealer owners whose names appeared more than once in the list. And, of those who contributed to political campaigns, every single one had donated almost exclusively to GOP candidates. While this isn't an exhaustive review, it does have some ominous implications if it can be verified.

Consider the partial list of Chrysler dealership owners, listed below. You'll notice that all were opponents of Barack Obama, most through sponsorship of GOP candidates and organizations, but a handful through Barack's Democrat rivals (Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in 2008, for example).• Vernon G. Buchanan: $147,450 to GOP candidates and organizations• Wallace D. Alley and Family: $4,500 to GOP.• Robert Archer: $4,600 to GOP and conservative causes.• Homer S. Higginbotham and Family: $2950 to GOP.• James Auffenberg and Family: $28,000 to GOP; $6,000 to one Democrat candidate.• Michael Maroone and Family: $60,000 to GOP; $8,500 to two Democrat candidates.• Jerome Fader: $6,500 to Democrats; $2,500 to Independent Joe Lieberman.• Stephen Fay and Family: $13,500 to GOP.• William Numrich: $20,000 to GOP.• Robert Carver: $10,000 to Democrats including $1,950 to Hillary Clinton, nothing to Barack Obama.

I don't know that it would be unusual to have almost all car dealers donate to republicans. But it does seem unusual to me that Chrysler found the need to pull dealerships that were highly profitable.

Once again, I still don't see how closing dealerships in and of itself makes a car company profitable.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

So the Obamunists believe we should transform our country into Europe. How are things going there?

... in eastern Germany, for example, the average poverty rate is around 20%, with up to 27% of people in one area, Vorpommern, living below the poverty line. By contrast, in southern Germany, in the states of Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, the poverty rate is around 11%. ...

Chancellor Angela Merkel's home state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, is the poorest region in Germany with a 24% poverty rate; one of the richest is the picture-postcard pretty Black Forest region, with a poverty rate of only 7.4%. According to the report, the massive gulf between rich and poor doesn't only exist between regions, but within them, too. The northern areas of the state of Bavaria have a poverty rate of 15%, more than double the 7% rate in Munich, in southern Bavaria. ...

One obstacle to such strategic action has been a pervading sense that men -- who, after all, out-earn women in the workforce -- don't need extra attention. “What I’ve seen in my work with institutions and with college administrators and faculty is what I would consider the model gender majority myth,” Harper explained. “It works very much like the model minority myth with Asian American students” – in other words, there's an assumption that all males are doing well. But subsets are underperforming academically – most notably African American men, who lag behind African American women in college enrollment by 27.2 percentage points. Overall, when not disaggregated by race, 57.2 percent of students enrolled in higher education in fall 2007 were women, and 42.8 percent were men.

American women are wealthier, healthier and better educated than they were 30 years ago. They’re more likely to work outside the home, and more likely to earn salaries comparable to men’s when they do. They can leave abusive marriages and sue sexist employers. They enjoy unprecedented control over their own fertility. On some fronts — graduation rates, life expectancy and even job security — men look increasingly like the second sex.

But all the achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness. In the 1960s, when Betty Friedan diagnosed her fellow wives and daughters as the victims of “the problem with no name,” American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In postfeminist America, men are happier than women.

How'd those Virginia Slims ads go? "You've come a long way baby". Well, I guess life in the NFL didn't turn out so great.

Now we have an entire population of dead beat males who are more than happy to let a woman do the heavy lifting. That's pretty liberating if you ask me.

Yeah, let's balance our budget by soaking those millionaires. They won't care because they enjoy the "privilege" of living in our great country/state/city.

How does that work?

Here's a two-minute drill in soak-the-rich economics:

Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O'Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it."

One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.

No doubt the majority of that loss in millionaire filings results from the recession. However, this is one reason that depending on the rich to finance government is so ill-advised: Progressive tax rates create mountains of cash during good times that vanish during recessions. For evidence, consult California, New York and New Jersey (see here).

Remember way back in the days of the election when we were told that an Obama election would mean the world would love us and would cooperate with us because, well, they would love the worldly Obama.

It hasn't worked out that way......

President Obama vowed to do a better job than George W. Bush by using diplomacy instead of wielding a big stick in dealing with hostile nations like Iran, North Korea and Syria. It hasn't worked.

Obama pleaded with them to "unclench their fists" and promised to reward them with a softer, more deferential United States eager to atone for past bullying tactics. Thus, the President opted for more positive relations with the United Nations, extolled the virtues of multilateralism, and appointed high-level special envoys to Iran (Dennis Ross), to Afghanistan-Pakistan (Richard Holbrooke) and to Israel and the Palestinians (George Mitchell).

So far, however, there have been no takers for Obama's entreaties. Just the opposite. The president's charm offensive has had the opposite effect -- a tougher, more belligerent tone, coupled with ominous muscle-flexing by the likes of Tehran and North Korea. The Taliban also ihs been riding high, while Pakistan falters.

On Memorial Day weekend, North Korea announced that it has conducted a "successful" nuclear test, which came at the heels of its recent test-firing of an advanced, long-range rocket over Japan, while Iranian President Adhmadinejad ruled out negotiations with Washington over his nuclear program Tehran in the meantime rattled more sabers by demonstrating that it could reach Israel, U.S. troops in the Mideast and portions of Europe with a new 2,000-kilometer-range missile.

While Obama places his bets on "soft" power to cajole Iran, North Korea and Syria away from threatening their neighbors, they see his agenda as appeasement and a license to create even more mischief. Ahmadinejad even managed to draw the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan to a three-way summit that signaled Iran's clear intention to erode U.S. influence with Islamabad and Kabul.

Monday, May 25, 2009

The city of Spokane, who hasn't had a republican run the city since Madonna was a virgin.....

A 53-year-old man was arrested Saturday afternoon for allegedly raping a woman in broad daylight at Riverfront Park.

Spokane Police Officer Tim Moses says the rape happened just before 2 p.m. on the north side of the river, near the park fountain. He said the two were within sight of many families who were at the park to enjoy the nice day.

Witnesses initially called Riverfront Park Security, who responded to find 53-year-old Terry Thomas allegedly sexually assaulting a 27-year-old woman behind a large rock. When Spokane Police arrived Thomas became uncooperative and combative, but they were able to eventually arrested him.

According to the victim, she and Thomas had only met that day and were drinking in the park with another man. That man eventually left the two alone.

A Hamilton County judge last week decided he knew that truth, declaring Weber a nudist camp squatter and ordering his eviction.

That is the most recent development in a Hamilton County lawsuit pitting one of the founders of Paradise Gardens - a Colerain Township campground for nudists - against the rest of the group's owners.

Weber filed suit in 2008 against the nudist campground he helped found more than 20 years ago after the other owners served him with an eviction notice in 2007. For more than two years after that notice, though, the remaining owners - who also are members of the campground's board - watched in frustration as Weber refused to leave, accused them of misdeeds and fought all their attempts to end his association with the resort.

"He just decided one day he liked it and didn't want to leave, so he took the wheels off his RV and built a little porch around it," Paradise Gardens' attorney, Joseph Krause, said.

"The problem with that is that is not how these campgrounds work. No one's allowed to live there year-round. That's Ohio law."

They call it paradiseI don't know whySomebody laid the mountains lowWhile the town got high....

Here's a Paul Krugman analysis of the financial debacle called California.

And in true Krugman fashion, the blame doesn't lie with democrats who've controlled the state for the last millennium, it lies with minority party who doesn't have enough power to open a lemonade stand.

For California, where the Republicans began their transformation from the party of Eisenhower to the party of Reagan, is also the place where they began their next transformation, into the party of Rush Limbaugh. As the political tide has turned against California Republicans, the party’s remaining members have become ever more extreme, ever less interested in the actual business of governing.

And while the party’s growing extremism condemns it to seemingly permanent minority status — Mr. Schwarzenegger was and is sui generis — the Republican rump retains enough seats in the Legislature to block any responsible action in the face of the fiscal crisis.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

From the city of Cincinnati who hasn't had a republican mayor since Lincoln gave the gettysburg address.....

Four in 10 people arrested in Hamilton County last weekend didn't spend the night in jail.

There was no room.

The Hamilton County jail is bursting at the seams, so full that every day the sheriff's office has to release inmates either before their court appearance the next morning or their sentences are fully served.

Many who are sentenced to serve jail time don't. They're being told to come back later.

To get a sense of exactly who is being released, The Enquirer looked at the number of people released last weekend. In all, 148 people - at least 16 of them felony cases - were released from the jail and told to come back to court in the morning.

Cincinnati police made 111 of the arrests.

While some of the people committed the most minor of crimes - improper signal or trespassing - others were accused of assault or drunken driving in which they caused a crash. Many were "quality of life" crimes that affect neighborhoods like minor drug crimes and prostitution.

Some examples:

Cianika Campbell, 30, of North College Hill, was released after being arrested May 17 on a charge of assault, accused of getting into a fight in a Roselawn nightclub and then driving her car into a crowd. Nobody was hurt, but the arrest report says she created a panic.